May 02, 2009

Jumping into the sea of social media over the last nine months I've made many connections in the library and information science world, the social media enthusiasts world, and the nonprofit technology world. In the back of my mind, increasingly over the last three months, has been the knowledge that I need to up my game as far as having a recognizable professional presence on the web beyond Friendfeed, Twitter, and LinkedIn. I know it's time to give this blog a facelift, and maybe port the posts from my other blog, Swimming in a Sea of Social Media, over here. Time to consolidate, clean up, and post on a regular schedule.

Now I'm being pushed to accelerate the cleanup timeline, since Louis Gray recommended me as a person to follow on Friendfeed. His post came out on Thursday, April 30th, at 3:20 pm. I got 36 new subscribers that day. The next day I got 40. Today I got eight so far, but it's early, and one of them is Leo Laporte which is, well, huge to me as far as reach.

And isn't reach one aspect of what social media is all about? Although on the one hand, most of us say we are engaged for the conversation, ideas, and resource sharing, and really don't care how many followers we have, it's very difficult to enter the conversation until you have enough followers to extend your reach. Sure, on Friendfeed you can join any conversation of interest that you can find. But when you want to start your own exploration of a topic, you'll be greeted with crickets until you have some reach.